Aircraft technology, including unmanned aerial vehicle (“UAV”) technology, is a valuable tool for mission profiles involving intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and payload delivery. In operation, aircraft may encounter both large and small obstacles within the aircraft's airspace, which may be fixed or moving, and whose position is not known in advance. Traditional forms of obstacle detection and avoidance within an aircraft rely on a pilot to provide the critical duty of looking outside the aircraft in order to make sure that the aircraft is not on a collision course with an obstacle, such as another aircraft. Existing technology for preventing aircraft from colliding with obstacles, including Global Positioning System (“GPS”), are generally inadequate as many obstructions cannot be recognized (or quickly recognized) via a GPS device and, depending on the altitude or terrain, GPS accuracy performance varies widely across environments.
The commercial aviation industry has, however, adopted a Traffic Collision Avoidance System (“TCAS”) as a standard to avoid collisions, which allows cooperative aircraft to locate and avoid each other. As can be appreciated, a cooperative aircraft refers to an aircraft able to cooperate with a cooperative sensor. For example, a cooperative aircraft may be equipped with a TCAS (TCAS II or earlier generation), such as a Mode S or a Mode C transponder, ADS-B, or, alternatively, using other emissions and squitter messages such as ADS-B. While TCAS offers a solution to the problem of detection and avoidance of obstructions for UAVs, TCAS is only able to accomplish this goal if each UAV and obstacle contains a transponder. In other words, cooperative targets send out its location and heading (e.g., GPS location and velocity vector) to other aircraft via radio (e.g., using ADS-B or other methods), whereas non-cooperative obstacle do not send location and heading information to others (multi-rotor aircraft, general aircraft, birds, etc.). Additionally, current flight control systems designed to detect and avoid non-cooperative obstructions utilize costly radar arrays to track obstacle obstructions and are generally only used with large scale aircraft.
Thus, a need exists for a system to detect and avoid non-cooperative UAVs, aircrafts, and obstacles, while being accessible to both large and small aircraft at a reasonable price. Additionally, a need exists for an open architecture system that enables quick introduction of new capabilities, increases safety, and propagates functionality—without large expense or recertification. A system to detect and avoid non-cooperative obstacles collision course in an aircraft, such as is disclosed herein, addresses these needs and enables new capabilities to be rapidly introduced with minimal cost or certification burden.